Wednesday, September 03, 2008

I'm a Noel Gallagher fan

I like the Premiership, despite its brazen vulgarity and shady characters. Its like professional boxing used to be. When Clay beat Liston, the world stopped. Now it stops to tune into the Premiership. Its how most of the world's population defines Britain - second only to the Royal Family. But even by its normal standards of fantasy, the last day or two has seemed bonkers.

The only personal link I've had with this madness was that Mrs D and I dined at the excellent El Puerto's on Monday evening, sitting on the next table to Peter Ridsdale as he was resisting the six million that Stoke City were offering for Joe Ledley. He was glued to his mobile all night. That's big money for Cardiff City to spurn. Shows serious intent though. I reckon its the fear of finishing below Swansea that underpinned this rejection.

I was also feeling very pleased with myself when I first heard that Keegan had resigned. I'd predicted a few weeks ago that he'd the first managerial casualty of the season and was preening myself on my prescience. Seems I was wrong though, in that Curbishly has parted company with Iain Dale's West Ham today. I still predict a tearful Keegan resignation before the end of the season.

The maddest occurrence of all was the takeover of Manchester City by Sheik Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, the financial muscle behind Dr Al Sulaiman Al-Fahim of, who is likely to feature in our celebrity gossip columns from now on. Its been a long time since City fans have worn wider smiles that their United equivalents. This interview by Noel Gallagher is really worth listening to.

I'd always thought that he was a bit of an idiot, but No. He was incisive, reasoned and funny. If Gary Liniker retires, the BBC should bring him in as the replacement. His best line was "It'll be nice to know that every gallon of petrol a Man United fan buys is going into our transfer kitty". I also liked his obvious delight that the first thing the new owners had done was force Ferguson to pay a few more millions to Spurs for Dimitar Berbetov. There's going to be a rush on fuel efficient cars and bicycles in one half of Manchester from now on.